Just as the three-dimensional world can be imagined as a cross-section through a four-dimensional world, so might individual consciousness be simply a slice of a higher form of conscious existence.

When architecture did not suffice, Claude Bragdon began to arrange festivals where people would perceive transcendent realities collectively through song.

?!

Sandy Isenstadt reviews "the first book-length treatment of Bragdon and his world", a biography by Jonathan Massey.

wil wheaton loves avatar

The best thing about Avatar is that it imagines a world where a program to breed Thundercats with Smurfs has been successful. SCIENCE!

via twitter.com

via www.fuckyeahavatar.com

It's all true: it could well be titled "Dances with Thundersmurfs", and it's astonishingly delightful. Go for the 3D.

I was really struggling with the idea that I was going to live in Arlington. I drew a line through ‘one year’ and wrote ‘six months.’ I was there for 21 years.

Ian MacKaye on the Dischord house, The Orange Line Revolution - Music - Washington City Paper

The Black Book, which was first published 35 years ago, was like a scrapbook of the African-American experience

via www.npr.org

There's a certain way you can kind of move in and out of yourself, probably, to win consistently, that may be a little bit like writing fiction.

via David Foster Wallace in transcription at NPR.org. Huh, transcripts are free now. This is actually worth listening to, for the moment Scott Simon is caught off guard when Wallace mentions watching porn.

Google Public DNS privacy policy sounds reasonable:

Google Public DNS stores two sets of logs: temporary and permanent. The temporary logs store the full IP address of the machine you're using. We have to do this so that we can spot potentially bad things like DDoS attacks and so we can fix problems, such as particular domains not showing up for specific users.

We delete these temporary logs within 24 to 48 hours.

In the permanent logs, we don't keep personally identifiable information or IP information. We do keep some location information (at the city/metro level) so that we can conduct debugging, analyze abuse phenomena and improve the Google Public DNS prefetching feature. We don't correlate or combine your information from these logs with any other log data that Google might have about your use of other services, such as data from Web Search and data from advertising on the Google content network.

How to keep a folder of text files in sync across multiple Macs and editable on an iPhone has bedeviled me for months. Today, sweet relief in the elegant form of a few world-class geek tools, loosely joined: How to sync Notational Velocity, Simplenote, and Dropbox text documents with Hazel.

The new NYPL logo looks a lot like the Lyon Video logo.

Concentration is a great & steady state of grace — Ken Isaacs, How To Build Your Own Living Structures

via www.homegrownevolution.com

The “prior art” claim of white people wearing locks is shot. White people falsely claiming their ancestors invented the hairstyle don’t do anyone any favors.

via www.alterati.com

I feel most movies I see don’t take me seriously. It’s like they think I’m 16 or something. Or they don’t realize that I’m sitting in a movie theater and there’s nothing else going on. They don’t need to fight for my attention. They got my attention. They can be comfortable, it’s fine.

Pitchfork: Guest Lists: Kings of Convenience

This is how an American soldier is made. A fascinating photo essay that details 27 months in the life of new US Army recruit Ian Fisher. It chronicles his recruitment, induction, training, deployment and finally, his return from combat. posted by Effigy2000 (65 comments total) [add to favorites] 34 users marked this as a favorite [!]

via www.metafilter.com

Julia Baum took photos of suburban homes in Santa Clara, CA that were all built from the same architectural plan.

I'm pretty sure I grew up in a house just like these. Dig the Dr. Seuss shrubbery.

via kottke.org

45 Homemade Foods You Can Make Yourself (But Never Thought You Could)

His Soul Is Marching On | MetaFilter

This is where I note that West Virginia is West Virginia, it’s own state in its own right, because they were abolitionist, and dead-set against secession. Virginia is Confederacy - West Virginia is a solid, stout bulwark of the Union, as anti-slavery and pro-industrial as states come.

They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom.

Interracial couple denied marriage license in La. - Yahoo! News

Well, he’s unmarried. He still lives with his mother. He’s in therapy, and it doesn’t look like he’ll ever get out of therapy. And he didn’t go into literature.

nycgo / An Interview with Maurice Sendak

News Desk : The New Yorker

Do the marches on the streets of Pittsburgh belong in a time capsule of the past (protesters compared the police response to Kent State, though this time no one was shot or died), the present (this is what happens at G-anything conferences these days) or the future (police used a “sonic weapon” to disperse the crowd)? There was a glimpse, too, of crises yet to come, with Obama and other leaders responding to the news that Iran was building what the I.A.E.A. called a “semi-industrial enrichment fuel facility.”

On day two when I got reprimanded for saying “awesome” instead of “pawsome” and “very” instead of “beary” I knew I was in for a long summer.

The Worst Jobs I’ve Ever Had — The Bygone Bureau

The best thing I see about the current deep recession is that these damnable masters of the universe are no longer celebrities. I hope it lasts, and we make much of people who create something other than marketing campaigns and buy-out deals.

Seen Through a Glass: Hey, Mister Kiely: which of your kids do you like best? Huh? Which one?

Do not add TypePad bookmarklet to your browser if you:

• Are convinced blogging is something people did 5 years ago.
• Believe blogging requires a Phd in comparative literature, politics, zoology, astrology or computer science.
• Believe all blog posts should be written in long hand before publishing.
• Require your posts to be approved by your Mom/Boss/Partner before publishing.
• Believe there is nothing worth sharing on the internets.
• Are using Internet Explorer 3, Netscape Navigator 3, or WebRunner.

via www.typepad.com

I love bookmarklets.

We’re in a strange moment in American history when a mouse-eating barefoot survivalist in the mountains of Arizona makes more sense than the chief investment strategist of Merrill Lynch. The Atlantic Online | May 2009 | Why I Fired My Broker | Jeffrey Goldberg

One obvious consequence of speaking such a language is that you have to stay oriented at all times, or else you cannot speak properly. The normal greeting in Kuuk Thaayorre is “Where are you going?” and the answer should be something like “Southsoutheast, in the middle distance.” Edge: HOW DOES OUR LANGUAGE SHAPE THE WAY WE THINK? By Lera Boroditsky, my new hero. I’ve long been fascinated by the question, but I had no idea there was a history of debate about this – I was plain shocked to learn that most people thought language does not affect the way we think. It just seems so obvious to me, and I love the research Lera Boroditsky has done to demonstrate the many ways it’s true. See also: NPR: Shakespeare Had Roses All Wrong.

It has been a journey with many twists and turns along the way, but Judaism is the language of my soul, and it’s what resonates with me 1st black female rabbi spent years searching - washingtonpost.com

“Though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.” – Frederick Douglass. Happy birthday, John Brown. (Thanks, Arthur.)

Tiana is the first Disney princess in more than a decade, and the first ever to be black. … Prince Naveen, for the record, is neither white nor black, but portrayed with olive skin, dark hair and, need we state the obvious, a strong chin. The actor who plays him, Bruno Campos, hails from Brazil. Disney Introduces First Black Princess, Tiana, in ‘The Princess and the Frog’ - washingtonpost.com

I braise the turnips in butter and white wine; I sauté the kale and collards with olive oil and sea salt; I wait until the parsley shrivels and then throw it out. What to do with the kale, turnips, and parsley that overwhelm your CSA bin. - By Catherine Price - Slate Magazine

Women started grabbing me and throwing my whole body backwards into the crowd. I was shocked. All I was trying to do was throw my panties. Loiterer About Town: Tom Jones at the Warfield: Culture/Entertainment: SFAppeal

… there was no choice. I was totally broke. So I didn’t have time to sit around pondering or thinking all this through. It was just done on a basic pure survival level. I did what I had to do. Van Morrison on ‘Astral Weeks’ – you’ve got to hear it from him.

…We were building a brave new world where the Chinese made things out of plastic for us, the Indians provided customer support when these Chinese-made things broke, and we paid for it all just by flipping houses, pretending that they were worth a lot of money whereas they are really just useless bits of ticky-tacky. ClubOrlov: Social Collapse Best Practices. Caution: depressing.

I know you don’t want to see any pictures of George Bush any more but what about if it is pictures of him crying?